Home | Articles | Features | Modern Teachers

Listings | Community Noticeboard | Chat Board

FELLOW TRAVELLERS Wensy, the Chinese girl living in Malaysia, did not know me personally, as we had never met before. She found my e-mail id on the web and wrote to me and asked if I could come to Malaysia to conduct a meditation event. She told me that there would be about a dozen people in the group. It was all out of the blue for me. I wrote yes to her without knowing anything about her. We decided the dates of my visit to Malaysia. She asked me how much I would charge for conducting such an event. I replied that for me conducting meditation was not a commercial activity, so I would not take any money, except the travel expenses and accommodation. She was surprised and delighted. Not knowing anything about her, I was curious to know who she was and what she did. I did not ask her but did a search on the web and found out very easily that she belonged to a Buddhist group in Malaysia. This group had some regular programs of some Buddhist monks, Rinpoches and Kempos. She was working as a Secretary and was involved in the publication job of the Buddhist magazine. I became very much interested to travel to Malaysia, conduct an event and have some glimpses of the world of Tibetan Buddhism. Early in the morning, Wensy came to pick me up from KL airport and drove me to her home. She lived in a modest apartment on the fifteenth floor of a Condominium. Her husband is an IT businessman. They have a small room for prayer also where I saw her meditating every morning before going out. Wensy took me to her office and later in the evening to her temple for dinner. I attended a discourse by one Rinpoche who had come from USA and who often visited India. He could speak a little bit of Hindi and after greeting each other we both conversed in Hindi. Two days later I conducted the meditation event. It was a very fresh and nourishing experience for her and her group of Chinese friends, as they had to dance and laugh a lot. Some of them had never danced so much earlier, so they had pain in their legs. I saw Wensy was limping too. She remarked "I would need a wheel chair if I dance again tomorrow. But I am limping after so many years I am enjoying this experience". Next day again she was dancing delightfully. I asked her if it was ok for her to dance. She said, " I feel pain only when I am walking. I feel no pain when I dance." So I joked with her, " Then no need to walk, just keep dancing". The next day, after the event, she came to drop me at the airport and said to me, "so soon this event is over. Please come again and come more often". I noticed that her eyes had become wet. I said yes I would come again. In my flight, a boy from Ludhiana was sitting next to me. The air hostess asked both of us, "Are you travelling together?" I said no, then I changed my statement immediately : "Yes we all are traveling together. We are all fellow travellers, even though we happen to be strangers." And I thought of Wensy, who was totally a stranger to me a week ago, and how she had become a fellow traveller on the path of meditation. Swami Chaitanya Keerti